'Life started on Mars' is a theory that has long been on hold for the lack of support and clear evidence that Earth life sprang from the red planet, yet today is definitely a day to remember as new evidence has surfaced that life indeed started on Mars, and the question that man needs to answer right now is "Were our earliest ancestors Martians?" USA Today asked on Thursday.
The postulate that life started on Mars originated from theories that certain bacteria were transported to Earth via a meteorite from Mars, as proven by bacteria's ability to withstand extreme conditions. A new research to support this idea has been unveiled just this week in Italy at the 2013 Goldschmidt Conference.
"The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology Biochemist Dr. Steven Benner said during his presentation at the Annual Geochemistry Colloquium in Florida.
According to Benner, the 'Life started on Mars' theory may be true as supported by the fact that an oxidized form of molybdenum, which was likely available on Mars' surface billions of years ago, played a vital role in the origin of Earth life.
"It's only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed," Benner said in a statement earlier. "This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because 3 billion years ago, the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."
Benner added that oxidized molybdenum plays an important role in the transformation of organic compounds into living things, noting that boron, another element, would also suffice.
"Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there, too," he said.
Huffington Post stated that Benner's research on the 'Life started on Mars' theory is grounded on two paradoxes: the Tar Paradox (explained above) and the Water Paradox.
The Water Paradox revolves around the idea that the three essential biological molecules for life namely, DNA, RNA, and proteins, may have originated from Mars as well, given the fact that water is proven to be a corrosive agent against all three and that the Earth during that time was covered mostly by water. Benner then supported this claim that Mars was the only suitable environment for the three biological molecules back then.
A group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is already creating a detection tool that is capable of taking and analyzing samples on the red planet for possible traces of DNA and RNA.
"It's a long shot," MIT Researcher Christopher Carr said during the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes project in 2011, adding, "but if we go to Mars and find life that's related to us, we could have originated on Mars."
Carr also raised another point by saying that if life originated on Earth, then it could have been possibly transferred to Mars through time.
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